Sony’s MMO EverQuest celebrates its 10th anniversary today. On March 16, 1999, the MMO was launched and became one of the first true MMO games. Only a few other MMOs have reached a 10 year lifespan, including Ultima Online and Meridan 59.
EverQuest, developed by 989 Studios, was released on both PC and OS X and has had 15 expansions over the years. Currently serves a few hundred thousand players, a far cry from the behemoth that World of Warcraft has become.
Despite losing a hefty sum on every PlayStation 3 console sold, Sony still has the most expensive console on the market, and as a result is feeling the pressure from publishers to lower the price of the console.
Mike Hickey, an analyst from Janco Partners says that unless Sony can cut the price of the PS3, publishers will relocate their resources to the Wii. Which is the reason Hickey believes that Sony will cut the price of the PS3 by $50 to $100 next month.
According to Bloomberg, Activision/Blizzard, the biggest publisher in the world, reported that 32 percent of their revenue in 2008 came from the Wii, while only 19 percent came from the PS3.
Publisher Natusme, known for titles such as Harvest Moon, and other casual and family friendly games, has been confirmed to join the ESA, and will also appear at this year’s E3 expo as well. The California based publisher has been making and publishing games since 1990, but is most known for the Harvest Moon series.
The ESA had a tough 2008, where LucasArts, Activision and id Software left the industry association. It looks to rebound though, as new, albeit smaller, developers and publishers are joining.
Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, the de-facto standard for the current generation of pretty titles (like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Mirror’s Edge etc.), is getting an addition of MMO features.
The new version of the engine will be getting a full MMO dev suite, including scalable statistics, data management backend and a content browser. More details about the new features will be detailed at GDC, where another heavyweight engine will be showcased, CryTek’s CryEngine 3, which also features MMO functionalities.
Well, they are by no means official numbers but analyst Jesse Divnich has a hunch that the following numbers are at least predictably accurate.
Anyways, Divnich says that the GTA IV expansion, The Lost & Damned, raked in less than $3 million dollars at brick and mortar retailers while raking in up to $18 million over Xbox Live.
While these numbers are not straight from Rockstar, it makes it easy to tell that the Xbox Live method of aquiring The Lost & Damned was much more favorable than the physical counterpart.
However, if the expansion’s content had actually been released on a game disc as opposed to getting a code to download the content over Xbox Live, these numbers probably would have been a lot different.
Read (Joystiq)
Gamers today are pretty much hooked up on statistics and prediction games and apparently this has set the stage for KlickSports to launch their free sports-based interactive prediction games, College Basketball Championship Challenge game, which is now open for fans to join and compete.
By visiting www.klicksports.com/promo/bracket.html, users can immediately participate in the fun by playing one game in each Region (4) in the First Round, and then continue to play one Regional game in each Round all the way through to the Final in April. Fans can play online (via automated Instant Messenger) and on mobile phones (via automated Text Messaging) during the entire Tournament. Players will be playing for prizes throughout the series, with a chance to win a PS3, iPods and team baseball caps.
The College Basketball Championship Challenge follows on KlickSports’ successful Super Bowl game in which KlickSports saw its user base increase by 48 percent. With the KlickSports’ college basketball series, fans predict team and player stats live during the game and play against their friends and other fans for points and prizes.
(Source) Press
While the existence for Lost Planet 2 and Dead Rising 2 was known for quite some time now, up until now no release date was given. That silence has been broken quite unexpectedly by Capcom US chief Chris Kramer, who confirmed that the games are set for release in 2010.
“Capcom’s kind of on a 30-year high right now,” he said, speaking in the latest Major Nelson podcast.
“It’s a pretty amazing place to be, between everything we’ve got going right now, between the launch of Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5, and our big titles for next year, Lost Planet 2 and Dead Rising 2.”
Capcom’s official stance is that of “we haven’t announced a date yet”, but seeing as how this comes from a rather credible source, it simply cannot be disputed.
2010 can’t come soon enough!
Over on Major Nelson’s blog is word that this week’s deal on Xbox Live is the original Xbox game Fable. Normally priced at 1200 points, the game can now be bought for 800 points, a big savings of around 33%.
Fable was developed back in 2004 and was released first on Xbox and then on PC. An expansion was later added to the PC, though Xbox gamers were left out. A sequel to the action-RPG was released last year.
Seeing as how February has come and gone without Alpha Protocol being released, it can easily be deduced that the game had been delayed. It wasn’t until today that it was confirmed by publisher Sega, though, who noted that the game will now be released this October on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
The action-RPG will have players step into the shoes of a modern-day spy. Sega added that players can be "smooth like James Bond, cold and precise like Jason Bourne, or just plain explosively kick-ass like Jack Bauer."
The game was said to be affected by layoffs at developer Obsidian, which had its Aliens RPG project cancelled.
Best known as the voice of Solid Snake to gamers, David Hayter has co-founded a new development studio with the goal of producing a wide range of media, which includes games.
Movie producer Benedict Carver (Doomsday) has teamed with Hayter to found the company, which will develop “film, TV, Internet and video game projects in the action, sci-fi and horror genres.”
Dubbed Dark Hero, the studio’s first project will be Demonology, a horror film about a student attending an international high school in Belgium. Hayter himself will write and direct the movie.
